mind would be running, it’s 8.30 and Morris not here, steal all shower caps, check behind bathroom door, 8.31 and he’s not here, out of bathroom looking cheerful, throw stolen shower caps into bag, switch off TV, say are we right then, 8.32 and Al stands up, 8.32 she wanders to the mirror, 8.33 she is dropping the sodden tea bags from the saucer into the used cups, Al, she says, what are you doing, can we not get on the road please…and then she will see Al’s shoulders tense. It’s nothing she’s done, nothing she’s said: it’s the banging and cursing, audible only to Al, that tells her they have been rejoined by Morris.
It was one of the few blessings Colette could count, that he didn’t always stay the night when they were away. The lure of strange towns was too much for him, and it was her job to provide him with a strange town. To stray up to a five-mile range from their lodging didn’t seem to bother him. On his bent, tough little legs, he was a good walker. But reservations at room-only motor lodges were not his favourite. He grumbled that there was nothing to do, stranded somewhere along the motorway, and he would sit in the corner of their room being disgusting. Al would shout at him for picking his feet; after that, she would go quiet and look furious, so Colette could only guess what he might be doing. He grumbled also if to get to his evening out he had to take a bus ride or find himself a lift. He liked to be sure, he said, that if need be he could get back to her within twenty minutes of the pubs closing. ‘What does he mean, if need be?’ she’d asked. ‘What would happen if you were separated from Morris? Would you die?’ Oh no, Al had said; he’s just a control freak. I wouldn’t die, neither would he. Though he has already, of course. And it seemed that no harm came to him on the nights when he would fall in with some other lowlifes and drift off with them, and forget to come home. All next day they’d have to put up with him repeating the beery jokes and catchphrases he had picked up.
When she’d first joined Al, she’d not understood about Morris. How could she? It wasn’t within the usual range of experience. She had hoped that he’d just lurch off one night and not come back; that he’d have an accident, get a blow on the head that would affect his memory, so he’d not be able to find his way back to them. Even now, she often thought that if she could get Al out of a place on the dot of eight thirty, they’d outsmart him; hurtle back on to the motorway and leave him behind, cursing and swearing and walking around all the cars in the car parks, bending down and peering at the number plates. But somehow, try as she might, they could never get ahead of him. At the last moment, Al would pause, as she was hauling her seat belt over her bulk. ‘Morris,’ she would say, and click the belt’s head into its housing.
If Morris were earthside, she had once said to Al, and you and he were married, you could get rid of him easily enough; you could divorce him. Then if he pestered you, you could see a solicitor, take out an injunction. You could stipulate that he doesn’t come within a five-mile radius, for example. Al sighed and said, in spirit world it’s not that simple. You can’t just kick out your guide. You can try and persuade him to move on. You can hope he gets called away, or that he forgets to come home. But you can’t leave him, he has to leave you. You can try and kick him out. You might succeed, for a while. But he gets back at you. Years may go by. He gets back at you when you’re least expecting it.
So, Colette had said, you’re worse off than if you were married. She had been able to get rid of Gavin for the modest price of a DIY divorce; it had hardly cost more than it would to put an animal down. ‘But he would never have left,’ she said. ‘Oh no, he was too cosy. I had to do the leaving.’
The summer they had first got together, Colette had said, maybe we could write a book. I could make notes on our conversations, she said. ‘You could explain your psychic view of the world to me, and I could jot it down. Or I could interview you, and tape it.’
‘Wouldn’t that be a bit of a strain?’
‘Why should it be? You’re used to a tape recorder. You use one every day. You give tapes of readings to clients, so what’s the problem?’
‘They complain, that’s the problem. There’s so much crap on them.’
‘Not your predictions?’ Colette said, shocked. ‘They don’t complain about those, surely?’
‘No, it’s the rest of the stuff – all the interference. People from spirit, chipping in. And all the whizzes and bangs from airside. The clients think we’ve had a nice cosy chat, one to one, but when they listen back, there are all these blokes on the tape farting and spitting, and sometimes there’s music, or a woman screaming, or something noisy going on in the background.’
‘Like what?’
‘Fairgrounds. Parade grounds. Firing squads. Cannon.’
‘I’ve never come across this,’ Colette said. She was aggrieved, feeling that her good idea was being quashed. ‘I’ve listened to lots of tapes of psychic consultations, and there were never more than two voices on there.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ Al had sighed. ‘My friends don’t seem to have this problem. Not Cara, or Gemma, or any of the girls. I suppose I’ve just got more active entities than other people. So the problem would be, with the tapes, could you make the words out?’
‘I bet I could. If I stuck at it.’ Colete thrust her jaw out. ‘Your pal Mandy’s done a book. She was flogging it when I went down to see her in Hove. Before I met you.’
‘Did you buy one?’
‘She wrote in it for me. Natasha, she put. “Natasha, Psychic to the Stars.”’ Colette snorted. ‘If she did it, we can.’
Al said nothing; Colette had made it clear she had no time for Mandy, and yet Mandy – Natasha to the trade – was one of her closest psychic sisters. She’s always so smart, she thought, and she’s got the gift of the gab; and she knows what I go through, with spirit. But already Colette was tending to push other friendships out of her life.
‘So how about it?’ Colette said. ‘We could self-publish. Sell it at the psychic fayres. What do you think? Seriously, we should give it a go. Anybody can write a book these days.’
Colette joined Alison in those days when the comet Hale-Bopp, like God’s shuttlecock, blazed over the market towns and dormitory suburbs, over the playing fields of Eton, over the shopping malls of Oxford, over the traffic-crazed towns of Woking and Maidenhead: over the choked slip roads and the junctions of the M4, over the superstores and out-of-town carpet warehouses, the nurseries and prisons, the gravel pits and sewage works, and the green fields of the Home Counties shredded by JCBs. Native to Uxbridge, Colette had grown up in a family whose inner workings she didn’t understand, and attended a comprehensive school where she was known as Monster. It seemed, in retrospect, a satire on her lack of monster qualities; she had in fact no looks at all, good or bad, yes or no, pro or con. In her school photographs, her indefinite features seemed neither male not female, and her pale bobbed hair resembled a cowl.
Her shape was flat and neutral; fourteen passed, and nothing was done in the breast department. About the age of sixteen, she began to signal with her pale eyes and say, I’m a natural blonde, you know. In her English classes she was praised for her neat handwriting, and in maths she made, they told her, consistent progress. In religious studies she stared out of the window, as if she might see some Hindu deities squatting on the green mesh of the boundary fence. In history, she was asked to empathise with the sufferings of cotton mill operatives, plantation slaves and the Scots foot soldiers at Flodden; it left her cold. Of geography, she had simply no idea at all; but
